Ready for a new North American superpower?

A Dec. 7 Wall Street Journal essay, “Red, White and Maple,” by Diane Francis suggested that it would make sense for the United States and Canada to eliminate their border — “either by creating a customs and monetary union or, more radically, by merging outright into a single nation-state or a European Union-style partnership.”

Francis, who holds citizenship in both countries, is the author of “Merger of the Century: Why Canada and America Should Become One Country” so this isn’t new territory for her.

Look what’s happened with the European Union, you say, and recognize that both countries don’t want to lose any cultural identity but Francis lays down a pretty good argument.

“No two countries on Earth are as socially and economically integrated as the U.S. and Canada. They share geography, values and a gigantic border,” she noted.

“If they were corporations (or European states), they would have merged a long time ago. And each has what the other needs: the U.S. has capital, manpower, technology and the world’s strongest military; Canada has vast reserves of undeveloped resources, noted Francis, who points to China’s growing role as an economic power as another incentive.

“The two North American neighbors increasingly find themselves staring down the barrel of state capitalism, as practiced above all by China, whose state-owned enterprises and sovereign-wealth funds have made a concerted effort to capture markets and resources,” she stated.

If the two countries joined forces, the result would be a more formidable superpower “with an economy larger than the European Union’s and a land mass bigger than South America,” added Francis.

She points to what the Europeans pulled off with their union, “uniting populations that shared no language and had slaughtered one another for centuries.”

Francis suggests copping what other countries have done around the world: opening borders to trade and travel while leaving governments intact.

I might go one step further and suggest an even stronger union — one that would follow the North American Free Trade Agreement passed in 1987, an idea sure to raise eyebrows and tempers but should be considered anyway: include Mexico.

Author: Steve Tarter

Born in England, raised in Boston, I'm a Midwestern transplant who's called Peoria home for the past 40 years. Married with four grown children, I enjoy journalism, film noir and radio drama. As the song goes, I like coffee; I like tea. Former president of the Apollo Theater in Downtown Peoria, I'm looking for a new raison d'etre.
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